Many bloggers assess at the end of the year, reviewing how everything was going in the last year and setting goals for the new year.
However, once you set these long-term goals, it is worth occasionally reviewing how you do it and making sure that you are still on track.
The mid-review comes in, that’s when.
Yet exactly what are you supposed to check? What can you tell if you do well? So what are the warning signs that you might need to modify?
I have come up with seven subjects over the years, and as I revisit my posts I am concentrating on them. And I would like to share today these seven fields, and ask yourself questions when you examine them. Starting with …
1. Your content.
In terms of your posts, what have been the subjects, categories and formats in the last 6 months? Have your list posts been particularly good? Are you still receiving answers three months ago to this problem? Do you cry for more interviews from your public?
You may also verify whether certain mediums have functioned better than others. Have infographic messages received better than email messages? Where did you hear your videos and live feeds? Is it worth the time it takes to capture and deliver the audience you reach for your podcast?
Do not forget to search your favorite posts for frequency. I looked at my Google Analytics recently and found some of our long posts over the past six months have done a great deal, which means that I will probably write longer posts in the future.
Now, see how many fresh contents have been updated. Have you reached the time limits you set at the start of the year? When you posted more or less than you planned, how did your audience respond?
It is a good time to look again at (or build if you have no one) your editorial strategy. Have you enough plans to spend the rest of the year? Would you need to reconsider any subjects, categories or formats to suit the audience more effectively? Now is the best time to shift your course, which will take you where you want to go.
2. Your traffic
Check out the last six months of your blog traffic. Were any spikes there? When that is the case, try to figure out what caused them.
We had a major traffic increase in digital photography school approximately a week ago. And almost everything was driven by a single message, how to take pictures of fireworks.
And this is completely valid, as on 4 July the day of America’s freedom.
For years (as well as New Year’s Eve) the same post spike around this time. And so we are actively encouraging it now as people want to shoot fireworks. In addition, we wrote more material to traffic and readers.
If there have been any traffic delays on the flipside? Will a trend allow you to decide what triggers them? The day after Independence Day, perhaps because everyone recovers from the festivities, we also see a decrease in traffic. Dips on holidays or on different days can be observed. How would you do to raise the frequency or extent of dips?
Why is your traffic the overall trend? Is it slowly going up or even dropping down? Is it steady up? In the last month, what is this?
If your traffic decreases, you need to evaluate it to see if there’s some way you can reverse the trend. At one point, we noticed a drop in our mobile traffic at both the Digital Photography School and ProBlogger, which was a wake-up call for us to optimize the design of both sites so that they could work better on mobile devices.
Have you been doing anything specific (e.g. writing guest posts, posting more social media updates, creating more shareable content) to bring more traffic to your site? If you did, was it a good use of your time? And if you haven’t, can you try to get those traffic numbers back up?
3. Your reader engagement
What do your readers think about you and your blog? Are they engaging with you? give some thought to the quantity of comments and emails you’ve been getting, and whether that number has been increasing or down over the past six months.
You should also study your bounce rate and the way often people share your content. this can facilitate your determine how your readers feel about your content, and the way open they’re to receiving more.
What are your open rates like on the emails and newsletters you send out? What quite engagement are you ancient social media? What’s the foremost frequent complaint of praise you hear from your readers? Hearing the identical message (good or bad) regularly from different readers can facilitate your understand how they feel about you and your blog.
Occasionally i purchase an email saying “You’re doing an excessive amount of promoting” or “You’re always trying to sell us something”. I’m sure every blogger gets an email like this once in an exceedingly while. But if I hear the identical thing multiple times from multiple readers, it’s an indication i’ll must address what quantity content I charge for and the way I reveal.
Ultimately, what you’re trying to figure out is whether or not or not you’ve delivered value to your readers. Has their reaction been positive, or do they feel you’ve taken quite you’ve given?
One way to seek out out how your readers feel about you and your blog is to make a survey and encourage them to require part. this will facilitate your determine not only how they feel, but also what you’ll be able to do to vary how they pity the higher.
You might also want to return up with a community project or challenge your readers can participate in to extend engagement.
4. Your monetization
For those of you who have monetized (or are trying to) your blog, you will evaluate your revenue sources and how well they have performed in the last six months. (I ‘m sure you test how much money you get a lot more often than not.)
Start by looking at the general pattern. Has it increased, decreased, or stayed stable? Are certain revenue sources (e.g. ads, partner deals, selling goods or services) better or worse than others? Are there some that you’ve been talking about doing but haven’t introduced yet?
You may need to look at the data for a full year (or just a few years if you have them) to see what patterns you may need to remember.
If that looks like your sales curve, you’ll have to come up with some way to extend those long-tail sales. Perhaps you may use an autoresponder that sends your newsletter subscribers on offer a month more or less after they subscribe. you would possibly also consider making the products more prominent on your website. After all, how can people buy something if they don’t even fathom it?
If you’re monetizing your blog with sponsors instead of products or services, you’ll must give some thought to approaching new sponsors. have you ever seen businesses advertising on other blogs in your niche that might be potential advertisers on yours? Maybe you wish to review your media kit moreover.
You could even create a promotional calendar within the same way you created your editorial calendar, especially if you propose on launching new products or services. this may facilitate your plan not only the event and launch of your product, but also when to start out talking about it to make excitement and anticipation.
5. Your technology
Why did your blog run from a technical point of view? Have you or your followers encountered any delays or outages? If so, you may want to think about moving to a better host provider.
Will you run the new version of your blogging platform? What’s with the plugins? Would you need to upgrade them, or maybe even delete them if they are no longer supported? Now if it’s time to get all up to date so that your blog is safe.
Is the template of your blog still working? Can this be done with an upgrade, or even a full overhaul? Is it open to mobile devices? (If not, then it has to be.)
Are there things that simply no longer work, either from a technology point of view or from a reader point of view? The last thing you want is to delete your blog because it’s boring or frustrating.
This is also a perfect time to search for e-mails, landing pages and related tools and services. You ‘re really using them first of all? If not, by canceling your subscription, you can save some money.
So if you use them, is it the money that you pay for them worth it? Is there anything else that might do a great job at a similar price point? (Remember to make the effort to make the switch.)
6. Your productivity
How successful have you been in the last six months? What aspects of blogging did you spend much of your time on, and was it worth it? And if you’ve taken the time to set up some workflows, how effective have they been?
Sometimes it can be hard to know where the time has gone. A while back, I installed a product called Rescue Time that tracks how you use the time you spend on your computer. It’s a pretty challenging tool to use, but it helped me realize where I was was wasting my time. It even helped me find out where I spent time on things that were productive even though they weren’t.
How do you make better use of your time from now on?
7. Your wellbeing
How are you going along with your blogging, and with life in general?
It’s a crucial question to ask, because your blog’s health depends lots on your own health – physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. so you ought to spend the maximum amount time (if not more) on taking care of yourself as you are doing on taking care of your blog.
A major aspect of our wellbeing is that the relationships we’ve got with family, friends, acquaintances then on. But you ought to also take the time to give some thought to the link you’ve got together with your blog.
How does one feel about it? Are you continue to hooked in to the topic? Does the thought of writing a brand new post excite you? Or does it feel more sort of a burden you have got to bear?
If your passion or energy for your blog is waning (or missing completely), you will have to take a clear stage. you will need a vacation. you’ll have to get some help. otherwise you could must change the direction of your blog in how.
You may also must ‘fill your cup’. Employees in traditional businesses often attend training courses, seminars and conferences as a part of their professional development. But as bloggers we don’t have a person’s resources department booking training courses and seminars for us to attend.
And so we’d like to manage our own professional development.
Is there a book you may buy that might facilitate your together with your blogging? Is there a seminar on new research in your niche you’ll attend? Is there an occasion springing up where you may meet other bloggers?
As bloggers we want to stay learning and developing ourselves and our knowledge. Because we will only put into our blogs what we put into ourselves.
Planning for the future
How much time do you have to spend reading your blog? It’s up to you. You could spend days studying and answering all these questions. But I encourage you to answer at least one question in each of the seven regions.
So then come up with an action plan to fix all of them.
No matter where your blog is now, I hope that your mid-year blog analysis will help you build a roadmap to place it in an even better position by the end of the year.
And what area are you going to work on first? So what questions are you going to try and answer? Let us know about that in the section.
